At the end of September, Twitter announced its latest product, Twitter Alerts, which allows emergency offices to get important and accurate information our to as many people as possible. Account managers of specific accounts have the ability to mark a tweet as an “alert” and it will automatically send a notification to the phone of those who have subscribed. Sounds like a great program to me.
This new feature is available to:
- law enforcement and public safety agencies;
- emergency management agencies;
- city and municipal governments, as well as their agencies and representatives;
- county and regional agencies, providing services to cities and municipalities;
- and select state, federal, and national agencies and NGOs.
While this doesn’t specifically include universities or colleges, many of us can argue that we fit within one of these categories. I recently submitted an application to be included in the program and I’m waiting to hear back, which they indicated could take some time.
I think this feature would be a great opportunity for universities to be even better prepared to send out emergency information when it matters the most. I hope more universities will join me in requesting the feature so Twitter will hopefully consider giving us the feature to inform students in emergency situations. Fill out the enrollment form.
Photo from Twitter Alerts website.